Google Search is also partially blocked

Submitted by martin on Fri, Nov 02, 2012

We just put out a story on GMail being partially blocked in China. It turns out that Google Search is suffering the same treatment. The table shows an overview of the IP addresses that are currently returned when looking up www.google.com or www.google.com.hk from China. One out of 13 is blocked. The IP address is chosen randomly when you first access google.com. If you are unlucky, a blocked IP address is chosen and you can't access Google. One quick way around it is to go to some other Google domain such as google.co.uk or google.ca.

The IP addresses used by Google Search and GMail are similar so perhaps this is just a mistake. But it's also possible that it's intentional and that even the basic Google Search will become unreliable in China from now on.

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Thu, Nov 24, 2016

Facebook is considering launching a censorship tool that would enable the world’s biggest social network to “enter” the China market. Sadly, nobody will be surprised by anything that Mark Zuckerberg decides to do in order to enter the China market. With such low expectations, Facebook is poised to usurp Apple as China’s favorite foreign intelligence gathering partner. If the company launches in China using this strategy they will also successfully erase any bargaining power that other media organizations may hold with the Chinese authorities.

Tue, Jul 05, 2016

There is a commonly held belief in China that if you have a VPN that works then you should keep quiet about it. In terms of freedom of access to information, the problem with this approach is that access to knowledge suddenly is a secret. Today we are launching a project that we hope will destroy that model.

Our newest website, Circumvention Central (CC), aims to provide real-time information and data about circumvention solutions that work in China. Since 2011, we have been collecting data about blocked websites in China and now we will add data about the effectiveness of VPNs and other circumvention tools.

We are launching CC with four main objectives in mind.

Our first objective is to help to grow the number of Chinese who circumvent censorship restrictions in China. By sharing our information and data about these tools, we hope to show a wider audience which circumvention tools are working.

Our second objective is to improve the circumvention experience for users in China by bringing transparency to tool performance. We will measure these tools on speed (how quickly popular websites are loaded) and on stability (the extent to which popular websites load successfully).

After Google found these unauthorized certificates, both Google and Firefox revoked its trust in CNNIC a few days later, a development we at GreatFire.org have adovacting forsince2013. Apple and Microsoft on the other hand, did not revoke their trust in CNNIC, nor did they make any announcements regarding the security compromise.